Play the new Civ4 “Game Of The Month” #228

By | January 4, 2022

New year, new “Game Of The Month”! The team has again put something together to challenge you directly at the beginning of the year!

This time you play as Hammurabi on a standard size fractal map on Noble level. You have until February 3 to finish this game.

All details can be found here: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/news-botm-228-hammurabi-noble-starts-3-jan.674742/

History: An Imperial Letter From Süleyman the Magnificent to Dom João III Concerning Proposals for an Ottoman-Portuguese Armistice

By | January 3, 2022

The Twitter user paisley_trees, who is a history reseacher at Yale, has put our attention to this letter, which was sent by Süleyman the Magnificent to Dom Joao III of Portugal, who are both leaders in Civ6.

This letter actually concerns a trade agreement between both countries. Both Ottomans and Portugese had some confrontations regarding the domination of the Indian Ocean. After multiple failed confrontations from both sides, Süleyman the Magnificent wanted to make peace, and suggested a trade: They wanted 250 000 kg of pepper in exchange for 5-15 years of peace and 3 800 tons of wheat.

The Portugese made a counter offer, 125 000 kg of pepper in exchange for at least 15 years of peace, 7 600 tons of wheat, free passage for trading, and a demand to the Ottomans not to construct galleys suitable for the Indian Ocean.

The relevant letter here is Süleyman The Magnificent addressing Joao’s last request, rejecting it, and asking again for the first terms.

The whole letter is sadly not freely available, but most of it (without further discussion in the research paper) can be seen for free on the first page, and it is possible to download it after a free registration.

You can find this letter here: https://www.jstor.org/stable/41104901

Play the new Civ6 “Game Of The Month”

By | January 2, 2022

Right before we went into the holidays, the Civ6 team has prepared you another GOTM, so that your holidays don’t have to be calm and peaceful ;).

For this GOTM you play Mansa Musa of Mali on a standard size inland sea map on Deity level. You have until January 25 to finish this game.

You can find all the details here: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/6otm-dec-21-krampus-vs-santa.674560/

PolyCast 395: Nobody Wants Your Stupid Launcher

By | December 28, 2021

The three hundred-and-ninety-fifth episode of PolyCast, “Nobody Wants Your Stupid Launcher“ is now available for streaming on polycast.civfanatics.com. This episode features regular co-hosts CanusAlbinus, Stephanie “Makahlua”, Phil “TheMeInTeam”, and Jason “MegaBearsFan”. Topics for this episode include:

News
– 00h01m39s | 2K’s Launcher Updates, Players Yawn
– 00h09m02s | #TheCivGive2021

Forum Talk
– 00h18m38s | TurnBasedLover’s Top 10 4X Games of All Time
– 00h34m58s | No Mods Allowed ON EGS

Senate
– 00h43m24s | Are Dams Worth Anything at All in Civilization VI?

PolyCast is a bi-weekly audio production recording live every other Saturday at 12 Noon US Eastern Time throughout the year, in an ongoing effort to give the Civilization community an interactive voice.

Good gamers, good managers? A proof-of-concept study with Sid Meier’s Civilization

By | December 28, 2021

The “Review Of Managerial Science” has a few days ago puliblished an article called “Good gamers, good managers? A proof-of-concept study with Sid Meier’s Civilization. In this article, 4 scientist of the University of Lichtenstein, the University of Rotterdam and the University of Münster had the hypothesis that being good at games, which require managing skills, might also indicate that a person is a good manager. They picked Civilization 5 for their research. The basic setup in this case was that participants were recruited at an university, and they got time to play Civ5. After some time to get used to the game, they got split into groups, and could play against each other. At the end the score was assesed. Afterwards, the gamers had to participate in various tests regarding management capabilities. It turned out that persons with higher scores in the game also scored better in these tests for management skills. This does not necessarily mean that playing Civ5 makes you a good manager, but that the same skills are required for both.

An excerpt:

“Our results should be useful to researchers from various felds who are becoming increasingly aware of video games’ potential to indicate several skills other than gaming skills. Our study revealed signifcant and positive relationships between the participants’ game success and how they performed during our assessments.
As explained, assessment centers can provide a comprehensive picture of an applicant’s knowledge and abilities, thus they are increasingly used to predict future job performance. Therefore, we also used the data collected from the assessments to calculate an overall assessment rating, a commonly used job-performance predictor (e.g., Russell and Domm 1995). In creating an overall assessment rating, there are different approaches to data aggregation (Thornton and Rupp 2006, p. 161), and we tested two purely quantitative approaches: First, we aggregated the skill-dimension ratings into overall assessment ratings, with weightings based on the relevance of the skill dimensions to the exercises; second, we used the skill ratings to calculate exercise ratings, which we then aggregated into overall assessment ratings, with weightings based on the length of the exercises. For both aggregation approaches, we explored how the overall assessment results correlated with participants’ game results, using the same model specifcation as before, and found that the students’ overall assessment ratings were signifcantly related to their game scores. Accordingly, video games may not only be used to assess specifc skills but could also be useful to predict performance at a more general level. In fact, assessment centers are one of the most commonly used tools to predict the future job performance of university graduates (see, e.g., Ballantyne and Povah 2004) who apply for managerial positions but typically lack work experience”

The article is freely available here.

You can discuss this article in our forum here: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/good-gamers-good-managers-a-proof-of-concept-study-with-sid-meier%E2%80%99s-civilization.674714/

Merry Christmas from Civfanatics

By | December 25, 2021

We want to wish everyone some happy and relaxed holidays, and also lots of joy while pillaging the pantry :).

Play the new Civ4 “Game Of The Month” 227

By | December 22, 2021

And it’s again time for the Civ4 “Game Of The Month”, so that you all have something to play over Christmas!

This time you play as Kublai Khan of the Mongols on a standard size earth2 map on Immortal level. You have until January 24 to finish this game.

All details can be found in this thread: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/news-botm-227-kublai-khan-immortal-starts-dec-20.674576/

PCGamer: Best Strategy 2021: Old World

By | December 22, 2021

PCGamer has elected Old World as their best strategy game of 2021. Which is quite a feat, since this meant it also beat e.g. Age Of Empires 4!
The article can be found here: https://www.pcgamer.com/best-strategy-game-2021-old-world/

An excerpt:
“It’s so much more than Civ with Crusader Kings’ humanity, though. Mohawk Games and designer Soren Johnson have also reconsidered a big list of 4X systems, as well as finding ways to make the genre more manageable without sacrificing complexity—sometimes they add even more interesting opportunities. The Orders system is fantastic for this very reason. It ostensibly limits how much you can do in a single turn, teaching you to prioritise, but that limitation can be neutralised by making certain decisions that will shape your civilisation and ruler. Simpler but just as welcome, you can undo any action you take, or an entire turn. It’s great for fixing misclicks or silly mistakes, but it’s also a boon for experimentation and learning the ropes.

All this, combined with its more focused timeframe—the name’s a giveaway—and fairly brisk campaign make it easy to get stuck into, but it’s still dense and sometimes opaque. I thought it was great at launch, and I can appreciate it more now.”

You can discuss this article in our forum here: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/pcgamer-best-strategy-2021-old-world.674644/